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Another Venison Pasty

A savory pastry filled with seasoned venison and butter, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Another Venison Pasty

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, season the venison pieces with pepper, salt, and mace.

  3. Place the seasoned meat in a dish and layer the butter slices on top.

  4. In another bowl, mix flour, water, and dripping to form a dough.

Assemble and bake

  1. Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick and cover the dish with it, wetting the edges to seal.

  2. Bake for 2 hours.

Finish with puff pastry

  1. Once cooled, remove the crust and cover with a rich puff pastry.

  2. Bake for an additional 45 minutes to 1 hour.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Venison + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together957 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Venison
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during the long, slow bake.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture as it melts over the meat during baking.
All-purpose flour
Forms the dough structure that encloses and seals the filling.
Dripping
Adds fat to the dough, making it short and tender when baked.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, aromatic heat that seasons the meat.

The step that matters

Sealing the dough edges. Wetting the edges before pressing the crust on helps it bond to the dish and seal in moisture. A poor seal lets steam and juices escape, so the meat can dry out during the long bake.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, pepper, butter, flour):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, pepper, butter, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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